Behind the White Coat

Steve and Ali Go To White Castle

It was a Sunday, sittin in the Bronx. Steve (my roomate) and I were watchin world series of poker, and got the munchies.... Our fridge was empty. We were hungry. We wanted something that was... satisifying. Something that we haven't had in a while.... Something that would really just hit the spot!! What could we eat to fulfill our craving??? So we hopped in the car and set out towards Westchester Square... To White Castle!

Too lazy to leave the car, we roll up to the drive through... A coupla crave cases should do the trick.. Come on steve, onion rings or fries, make up your damn mind!! I'm starving!!

Drive through window #2, finally, here it comes.. Steve looks happy, I'm ready for some of those nice lil square, juicy, bite size burgers, with the lil grilled onions, pickles, mmmmm yea....

Here we go!! The craving is done, let the feast begin...

But what happened to the hot college girls, weed, crazy truck drivers, cracked out Doogie, and handgliding on the way? I guess Jersey really is a lot crazier than Da Bronx!

White Castle, It's what we crave biyatch!!

Birthday Bashes

Fridays are supposed to be low key at work no? Well in medicine, anything goes. Usually my attending rounds by 3 on Fridays, but this past week was a busy one, and I was struggling there psat 8pm. On a more exciting note, the swan-ganz catheter I mentioned two posts ago was a success! My first IJ (internal jugular) central line stick, with a swan ganz to top it off. In brief, we give local anesthesia, stick a big needle into the neck at the right angle to hit the internal juglary vein (hopefully not the carotid) and pass a catheter in to measure the pressures of the right side of the heart. This will give us an idea if there is too much or too little fluid in someone with bad heart failure. Anyway, most residents don't even do that, and I, a fourth year medical student, was successful. Pretty good feeling. She ended up going home Saturday, doing just fine.

So Friday 8:30pm, I ran outta work to go home and shave, shower, change, and get outta the bronx by about 9:15pm. I head over to Columbia Dental to pick up my friend Charlie (aka Chass) who has just started there. My friend Manoj graduated from there, and now Chass is there, meaning I am gonna be stuck on the cross bronx a lot more on the wknds... Yet again..

So moving on, We went to meet my friend who was prepartying for her birthday.... In a hummer limo. That's right, she rented this 25 person vehicle out, we stocked it with goose, black, and gin, and set out into the city to pick everyone up. It started off with about 8 of us, and we went all around nyc - east side, west side, even borderline harlem - picking up friends until it was bout 20 of us.. It was quite the entertaining time I gotta say. I even stopped and picked up some of my own friends! Lots of girls, tunes, lights, it was like a mini-disco mobile. We were pretty much chillin and drinking the whole time since 10:30pm as passerbys gazed on us. By about 1am, we were all tanked! We ended up at Suite 16 at the end of the night, around 1:30. I remember very little after that point. I guess that's what happens when you don't eat dinner and drink scotch and vodka all night. I ended the night at the infamous "chicken and rice" spot on 52nd and 6th ave. There are two stands there that serve up late night grub, and surprisingly damn good! i had the lamb and pita with rice. Shit was hella good. (On another note, I discovered scotch and red bull to be quite a good drink - hey don't knock it till you try it!)

Now that same night, I ended up ditching my other friend for her bday (but not on purpose).. Shimona, posing here, turned the big 3-0, even though she looks as though she'll still get carded for R rated movies. I also realized (time after time) trying to go to two bday parties in one night in nyc is quite a difficult feat. So luckily she had a little gtg for drinks the following night on Saturday. Although after having barely recovered from Fri, I was going to enjoy a quiet evening at home working on my apps and watching tv, but after a long 2 min of deliberation, I gave in and went out yet again. I mean shit, it's Saturday in August. Fuck it. We were planning to head to High Bar at the Hotel Gansewvoort (one of my usual westside wednesday spot), but the line was longer than mamouns on the night of a desi party of fat chicks. Though the MPD (meat packing district) is so amazingly happening, there are people (with many hot girls) crawling everywhere you go. So we chilled at a little bar up the block - Ara, which was a chill lil, open-doored, red-tinged joint, playing some good tunes a'la thievery corporation. Some of the passerbys included this old black guy who looked like he drives a bus, in his red pimp shirt-hat combo, fake bling, and chinatown pimp shades. Then of course the random scruffy guy who rolls in with an old-school polaroid camera about the size of a mini-fridge. He's like "10 bucks for a foto." We were like "5 bucks." Then he's like "20!" Uhh, thas not how bargaining works tough guy. Not to confuse the poor bastard anymore, we dropped him a ten (with which he bought himself a stella), and then took the picture (took him about 10 min to do so as 8 random desis stood in the corner of this bar holding a pose.) We signed the photo like a high school year book, and gave it to Shimona for her memorable 30th in the MPD.

The One About The Dinner Party

It is in the spirit of my fellow blogger TT that I am 'guest-naming' the title of today's post, it just had a nice ring to fit the story. So this random aunt of ours invites my sister and I to some dinner at her upper east side apt. None of us remember her, probably because we were about 5 when she met us last. Anyhow, she claimed she was havin a dinner party for "young people," and wanted to invite us over. A dinner party at some random aunts apt, who we barely know. Very sketchy. We had no choice really since our mom insisted, so thursday we grab a drink at the nearest bar (Sutton Place it happened to be) and walked over at about 8:45 (invitation was at 8, but who ever gets there on time?) We ring the bell, and she answers, we walk in, and the first thing she says is that 'sorry that many of the young people dropped out." Great. A young people party? At first glance, it was clear we were the last ones to arrive; moreover, the average age of the 'get together,' was roughly..... Oh say 60 perhaps? What the hell were we doing here?

After an hour or so of sitting uncomfortably among the random group of old people that I have not even seen at my parents house before, making conversation with random old people about politics, I didn't know how much longer I could take it. It so happens there were some 'young people' in attendance. One random I-banker who was about 27, who was actually the only somewhat-normal one of the bunch. Nice guy, kinda dorky, spends his wknds riding horses up North. Interesting. Then there was this girl who happened to have designed the necklace my sister was wearing. Her conversation involved her revealing how she hates black people, and how she is sorry she knows she is racist, but she just can't take how lazy and unmotivated 'those people' are. Lovely. Make my next drink a black label please, thanks.

Then there was this very odd couple, the wife of which sort of became our hostess-she was also the random aunt's niece. The husband was 28, 4 yrs younger than the girl, and he makes money by making scultputres and random arts and crafts. We spent the rest of the night sitting in the back bedroom chatting, drinking, and smoking cigs with the couple and the banker.

This girl (the wife), who I'll refer to as Princess, because she was really quite histrionic, and had this snooty, upper-class, rich-bitch personality, was really a bit too much. Pathologically thin, she was saying how she used to be the rich family girl, and went to directing school and is writing a novel, and didnt have to worry about money. But then she read in the Wall Street Journal how here father got sued for 50 million $ and now she has to make money. Who the hell says shit like that? Apprently Princess does. She is one of those typical Karachi born pakis whose personality lies somewhere on the high society karachi-london-new york axis, but with her artsy flare, columbia grad school degree in directing, and former-rich family, puts her in her own little world. We spend the last few min of the night watching Ali-G episodes on cable on-demand with some random old auntie who came in for a cig. All-in-all, quite a painful, yet somehow strangely entertaining night.

Research, Patients, Apps.

So fourth year drudges on. Though from my recent posts it may seem that all I do is go out, even on weekdays, I actually have quite a busy schedule. Residency applications are open for business, doctors are being hassled for student recommendations, CVs are being re-modelled, personal statements are being banged out, and the stress level is slowly approacching Defcon 3. With Subinternship out of the way my first two months, I am now 1 month into my 2 moth research block for which I can hopefully do something productive and have something impressive to talk to residency committees about. I also hoped to have some time to do my damn applications, CV, personal statement, and what not. So far, most of my time has been belittled to sitting in the fellow’s room sifting through patient charts in efforts to look for some sort of data that is publishable… But I dunno what is going to happen in the end. We are looking at patients with diastolic heart failure to look for some correlation with trends in echocardiograms and …. Well something.. Needless to say it aint no shoe-in paper, but we shall see what we find…

The bright side of it is that I actually do get to do a lot of clinical stuff aside from the resesarch, seeing CHF (congestive heart failure) patients with the fellow, seeing CHF consults, and seeing patients in clinic, etc… He even is going to let me put in the next swan ganz catheter we do, (not even residents get to do that!). I’ve actually learned a shit load about patient management too. CHF patients have all sorts of issues. Like the one patient we had who perforated ed her bowel and went into septic shock. This lady came in with exacerbated CHF, and had this vague abdominal pain. She got a CT scan which showed nothing. A second CT scan was initially read as negative too (granted we were lookin for a bleed somewhere in the abdomen, but the radiologists should look for everything) Anywayz, the night resident missed the free-air that the attending saw in the morning. When I looked at the scan, it was clear as day: a huge pocket of air above the liver. (Air should be only in the bowel, if its in the abdomen, there is a hole somewhere, and all the shit (literally) leaks out. She had emergent surgery, and went into septic shock. 2 weeks later she died, a slow and unpleasant death it was. The first person I followed myself who died “on my shift” if you will.

Now here I sit, side tracked by TV, IM, and online poker, still trying to work on my damn personal statement. I can ramble for hours on this blog, but I cannot sit down and write one page about myself and why I want to choose internal medicine as a career. Sad really. I can even efficiently proofread other people’s statements, but for the life of me, I cannot get my own shit off the floor! What can you do. I should start a section that has samples and ideas for personal statements for people who have personal statement writer’s block such as myself… I know I aint alone.

A Picture Share!

Aaa shimmying into my car! Se e previous post!

The Week in Review

So it has been a while since my last post, and I realized how much stuff can go on in just a measley week! I almost feel cheated that I have to truncate my stories now to fit on one post! But we'll see if I can ramble out some of the key highlights of my week...

So Last weekend I ended up staying in the city at my friend's place, unplanned of course. We had dinner at Angelo and Maxies Steakhouse.. I was very skeptical of this park avenue joint, a hangout for the banker, ex-frat boy types, coming to browse for cigars while downgin a beer at the bar while watching the game. Though the steakhouse is lively, and the steak was surprisingly tender and scrumptous! I gotta say I thought it was on the level of or maybe even better than Spark's! So it was a success, worth checking out.

After that we ened up at an Indian Sorority Party at Stratta. Don't ask, but needless to say it was a fun time (especially when its all 21 year old sorority girls hehe) Too drunk to drive home, my roomate and I crashed at our friends place. The next day began with unlimited bloody marys and brunch for only 14.95 at the best brunch deal in the city: Chango! Gotta check it out if you havent been. If you catch a game and the mirachi band on Sunday, drink all day till 4pm, flat rate. Can't beat that! Oh yea, and they also have killer margaritas!

Post-brunch, still in my same clothes, we had to buy some threads to hold us off the rest of the weekend at Mexx and Zara. If you haven't been, my 2 favorite stores to buy shirts right now--hip, trendy, casual, dressy, u can get it done. Mexx jeans are great too, i just bought 2 pairs--i highly recommend checkin them both out! Later that night walklin home from a 430am night at Mark's Cafe where our freinds were spinning, I also learned that Lex and 28th is a base for late night hookers (in case u feel the need)

Of course what would a week be without Westside Wednesdays. This past Wed, I met an old friend up for dinner at Schiller's (read my old review here), great as before. Only 40 min wait (on a wed), had the burger, it was fantastic. This Wed led me back to High Bar (see previous post). Met a bunch of friends there, and had some drinks in great weather. Of course there is alwyas a twist eh? So the genius that I am, after parkingn my car, I went back for my wallet, and this time locked my keys in my car!! FUCK... Though i was like whatever. We went and had some drinks at the bar, my friend called triple A, and we waited til lhe came and shimmied in for my keys, and back to the bar. Luckily it was all covered in the 50$ deductable. Go AAA!!

Finally Thurs was dinner at Nobu. Ah yes... Actually the 4th time I been there, each time courtesy of a pharmaceutical drug rep dinner. Gotta love it. Fully paid for of course. This time we had the tasting menu loaded with all kinds of orgasmic sashimi conctions, and the inccredible kobe beef. Of course the standard dishes as well such as spicy creamy crab and shrimp, blackened miso cod, chilean sea bass, rock shrimp, and a delightful sushi platter. Oh yea, and unilmited Sake.. Gotta love that place (On the expense acct of course)

Anyway.. that was my week.. Qutie eventful. I'll have to post more often to avoid another affadavit-like post, and i can include more grimy details as well!

Westside Wednesdays

[ good - spice market - APT - High Bar - Cielo ]

Who says there is nothing going on Wednesdays in NYC? Certainly not me... At least not anymore. My cousin and I had quite an adventurous Wednesday night in the west side of Manhattan, purely random and uncharted. This brings me to a good time for another installment of my NYC restaurant/nightlife reviews...

It seemed like another boring Wed night at work, and I really felt the need to do something exciting, so I called my cousin Amber who is staying in the city for a few weeks, and I said lets just go out and do something. I picked her up and we decided to head towards the west village. I remember my friend told me about this place Good, a latin-fusion type place. So we looked it up in my palm's vindigo, and navigated the confusing downtown roads in the pouring rain. Good was in fact, damn good. A small cozy place, earthy tones, very minimalistic decor with a kind of aztec influenced-new york feel to it. The Caipirinhas and Mojitos were on point. They had this fantastic warm chilli corn bread, alone worth the visit. Latin infested seared and grilled fish dishes, steak with chimichurri sauce, enticing sides including braised artichokes, parmesan croquettes, and creamy corn, with the super-tasty fish taco appetizer. I'd say Good was in fact, brilliant! Perfect for a date or even a double.

After dinner, we had no destination, so I suggested checking out Spice Market. Now it's nearly impossible to get a restaurant rez at this hot hip new meat-packing joint, so I figure we'd slip downstairs to the lounge for a martini or two. The place was huge! The decor was an almost Buddha-Bar-esque fusion of East meets South Asia, with emphasis on deep sexy red tones, and saffron colored 'shalvar-kameez-like' outfits for the waitresses (but more sexy), all very impressive. Upstairs is the restaurant, and a large open flight of stairs down is the lounge, also quite roomy, with these very cool giant-booths in the back where party of 15 or so can sit privately in a sexy booth. The crowd was full of beautiful-looking people. Locals, visitors, and foreigners alike, all out to impress (even though it was a Wednesday!) I can only imagine the scene one a wknd. As for the drinkss, my specialty martini was sweet, fruity, and pricey, but the pineapple mojito was quite yummy (just bring your gold card). One of those "in" places you just gotta go to.

After a few drinks, the fun had just started. Amber had never been to APT, so I said it's down the street, let's check out the scene. Wed nights are pretty good there, very chill funk/soul/house music, nice lookin crowd, not too crowded, with their stenciled like decor, walking into the wed hipster scene--quite different from Spice Mkt. An apartment-like decor upstairs, with the loungey housey scened downstairs. A 5$ cover, but not a bad place to chill without the wknd APT bullshit on a wed nite.

We were considering going home after APT, but walkin towards the car, I look up and see the rooftop of this hotel with people up there. It was the Hotel Gansewvoort .Amber had been there once before with my sister, and I just had to check it out. We go up to the 15th floor rooftop where we arrive at High Bar atop the hotel. Wow what a place! I loved it here. It took up the whole roof pretty much, with an open air balcony all around, and indoor lounge area in the middle. Amazing view, a good crowd, and an awesome new place I'll definitely go back to. I even ran into a friend there out of the blue. And the place was packed! Lookin over the edge with our drink, Amber points out a block away the entrance to Cielo, another hot new club that is impossible to get in on the weeknds. She's jsut like "let's check it out," as a joke. I laughed. Crazy, going to yet another place now?? On a wed night, and Cielo, a full club! Let's just go home I said. 15 min later we paid the 10$ and walked in the door.

I figured since I cant get into this place (at least not without difficulty and a group of hot girls), let's go on a Wed. A 10$ cover, but well worth it. The place was bangin on a Wed nite! A lot of couples out (like many of the places we were at), but overall a good looking crowd. The sound system there is siiiick! Sexy-beachy-house music pounding away, a dance floor in the middle, surrounded by some tables and open areas to hang. The walls and bar surrounded by chill, sexy lighting, just enough to give it a pefect effect. Not too big, not too small, a nice sized place. They even have a back patio that you can go smoke a cigarette on. I can see how this placce would fill up fast on a wknd. If you can get your ass over there, I would def check it out.

Anyways, needless to say it was atypical wed night in the meatpacking district for us, unplanned, uncharted, but yielding enticing discoveries. I managed to get 4 hrs of sleep before work, half drunk, and worked till 9pm the next day (which was today). But hey, the real New Yorkers are the ones who can rage on weekdays, cuz those are the best nites out!! Now you know all that can be done on a single Wed night in nyc, so no more excuses can be made!! If you got nothing to do, it's wed, and you wana go out--Make it a Westside Wednesday.

Cielo

High Bar

Spice Market

Da Ali-G Show

You gotta love Da Ali G show.. If you haven't seen this show, then you really need to check it out.. Sunday Nights on HBO, it is a must see. It's basically this guy from England, who has several characters, primarily that of Ali G--a white man tryin to be ghetto black, and wicked-stupid to the point of such ridicule that you cannot stop laughing. The beauty of this show is, he gets guests and interviews with these high profile people, who think that he is a legit talk show or whatever, and he just fucks with them in his confused wigger ghetto style. It's like one of those things where you are embarassed to almost watch for the shit he gets away with! This guy has some BALLS.

this is HBO website's blurb:
Don't miss the action as the British comedic genius once again travels across America as the "hip-hop journalist" Ali G, interviewing some of the most important figures in politics, business, sports and the arts. Also along for the ride are Cohen alter-egos Borat, the easily confused TV reporter from Kazakhstan, and the supercilious Austrian fashion reporter Bruno.

One of my favorite characters has to be Borat. Especially this past week. Now this guy roles into a random bar somewhere in Arizona or somethign like that, and starts to sing country music on stage. The song was so funny and ballsy, i almost died. Basically singing bout how the Jews are takin over his country... The chorus goes: "Throw the Jew down the well.... so our country can be free!" You have to check out the audio and video on my friend TVT's blog: audio page, or the video page. You will DIE it's so funny. At first you see the patrons looking at him in shock, but by the end they are singing and dancing along! "Throw the Jew down the well!!" Absurdly amazing!!!

Check out the webpage at http://www.disbealig.com. It even has an ali-g translator!

Poker Part 3

So it was week 3 in the weekly no limit holdem tournament at Gleasons bar (across the street from our medical school up in the Bronx). 20-30 players, and the last 2 weeks I got knocked out on the first table. This week, I somehow managed to make it to the final table (3 top players from the 3 initial tables form the final table of 9 players). I came in short stacked with a measely 250$ (The buy in is 50$, and the top 4 finalists take home money). I anticipated an early knock out, but I somehow won a few hands, lasted 3 players, to be in the top 5 sitting with 1200$ in my stack. Not too shabby... I was still relatively short-stacked, but I was on a streak. Top 5 players sitting on the table. Next one out will get nothing, and the rest will get at least something (100$ for 4th place, but thas better than nothing). I get an Ace - 6, I call the blind. On the flop I get high pair with a pair of 6s with an Ace Kicker. One on one, I go all-in against this local Bronx white dude. Fuckin guy flops two low pair (2s and 5s) against my pair of 6s and Ace. After the turn, I need a measeley Ace, 6 or 2 for a higher pair, or a diamond for my flush.. Of course I don't get it and my all-in 800$ all gone. And I am the last person out before the top 4, and I don't get no money. Fifth place is the WORST place to come in when top 4 players get paid. Son of a bitch... My other friends faired no better, with one of them coming to the final table as chip leader, but going down 7th place. What can you do. Fuggedaboutit.. Until next time you biyatches!

Bombings

So Shaukat Azia (to be PM of Pakistan shortly) was attacked by a suicide bomber in Pakistan a few days back. The video can be seen here. Basically a guy walks up to the car, the motorcade stops (cops in front and back clearly not doing much in that 5 second window), the guy lifts up his arms, then boom... The driver and passenger were killed instantly. Shaukat Aziz was in the back seat, amazingly escaped un-scratched. God was certainly on his side on this one! I think he should make for a successful PM for Pakistan (even despite my bias since he is a family friend).

Too many bombings going on these days. New York is now on another high terror-alert. I want to know how do they determine which information is valid enough to proclaim a high terror alert? Who is to say an anonymous crank call in an Arabic voice proclaiming a bomb threat on some nyc building is a valid threat or not? I suppose we are to assume that our intelligence (does the CIA even have a director these days?) gathered information with some degree of solidity that would advocate mobilizing dollars and resources to babysit selected "symbolically significant sites" (with I hope more seriousness paid to security for the Republican National Convention? I mean if you think about it, Bush could just say, lets raise the terror status so we can draw some attention and keep the American public at ease and convince them that our intelligence is doing it's "job," and we are responding to the "information" that we have obtained. I feel like there is a terror alert every few months no? Anywayz.. Just something to think about, but perhaps I shouldnt be messin with validity of terror alerts when going to the city, especially risk having to pull over to fix my car bumper again--As in last Thursday when my persian friend and I could be seen fiddling with duct tape underneath a car before a bridge into manhattan. Now that's just plain sketchy.